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Is it the transport or DAC that enables HDCD/Red?

Good morning all,
I am new to transports and seperate DAC's. I recently purchased a Parasound CBD 2000 Belt Drive Transport and am looking to buy a DAC.

However, I am not sure what signal the transport is to provide in order for me to play HDCD as well as Redbook CD's. Should I expect the transport to provide the HDCD and Redbook signal or does the DAC do all the work?

Does balanced in/outputs produce a better sound than does regular RCA in/outputs?

Right now I am looking for a compact DAC (the smaller the better) that offers good to excellent sound for not a lot of money. I listen to classical (choral/orchestral) and jazz music. I love the human voice and large scale orchestral and choral works.

What shoud I be looking for since this is all a mystery to me at this point. I am just being honest. I really don't know what's happening in this area. By the way, I would be pleased if you would offer some of your choices please.

Finally, I am reading more so that I can learn more. Thanks so much for your understanding and input. Have a great and wonderful day and weekend.
rbwinterlink
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Bob - do you have ability to play HDCD in non-HDCD mode (redbook)? How does it sound?

You can probably guess my intentions - I'm trying to find what killed the standard (it's dead - isn't it?).
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
Kinjanki:
Actually the HDCD process has improved since I last looked at it years ago, and my memory was wrong - it produces a 20, not 18 bit datastream. Again it is much more than a simple dynamic range switch. See:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_pacific_microsonics_hdcd/
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Ghostrider45 - link doesn't work
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Ghostrider45 - sorry, it does work. It was just system error.

What they describe is just simple stretching of dynamics:

"In addition to dynamic decimation filtering, HDCD uses the control data to fit a 20-bit dynamic range into a 16-bit signal. Two types of complementary amplitude encoding/decoding are available; the use of either is optional. At the high end of the dynamic range, "peak extend" allows the user to boost gain by up to 6 dB. For quiet signals, "low level range extend" may be used to add up to 7 dB of gain. With both dynamic processes, the control data allows the decoder to restore the dynamics of the original signal."

Stretching 15 bits into 20 bits has to produce hole somewhere - I suspect its medium loudness. I'm not criticizing HDCD since I don't have any experience with it but wonder why new schemes they coming out with have extremely strong copy protection (SACD cannot be copied at all). Any time I see HDCD in store it is recording that sounded great on CD and often remastered.

Everything else they describe is mix and disk preparation. They claim superior A/D conversion but I wonder what are they converting. Most of recordings are already stored in converted (digital)form. Other techniques like dithering on lower bits can be and I suspect are used in mastering for regular CD.
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
K: you need to add the "www."

RE: Bob's comment about MS killing the technology. I don't know if that is so or not. but what I do know is that Keith Johnson's (co-inventor of HDCD) ReferenceRecordings site seems to be doing very well and of course all the issues are in HDCD:
http://www.referencerecordings.com/default.asp
and there's a new format on his website you can read about (I haven't yet) called HRx.

I just wish he'd bring back RR LP's ;-)
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